


Half truths and stolen relics

by elenatria



Series: Hiddlesworth [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Divorce, Eton, Filming, Heartbreak, Hiddlesworth, Loki - Freeform, Loneliness, M/M, Odin - Freeform, Thor - Freeform, anthony hopkins - Freeform, kenneth branagh - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenatria/pseuds/elenatria
Summary: Tom Hiddleston is filming the Vault scene with Anthony Hopkins and is forced to revive painful memories from his Eton years.A hot cup of coffee and a blond Aussie come to the rescue.





	Half truths and stolen relics

                                                                                               

 

_“You’re the only one who understands, mate.”_

What was it like to be away from home, for so long?

Tom knew. And he understood alright. At thirteen he boarded at Eton college. He was always the studious type, always bringing A’s to his proud parents. He was a middle child, an only son, and although he never took as much pressure as his older sister he wanted to excel at everything, sports as well as classes. He had to. It was like a competition with himself, a silent struggle, the only thing he could do as a child to show his worth, to stand out.

To beg his family to stick together.

He could feel the tension rising as he was packing his things for Eton. The long silences, the outbursts, the fights between his parents on whether it was advisable to send him away now or not. He didn’t know, they hadn’t told him, but he had sensed it.

            Three months after he moved to Eton he got a phone call. His friends asked him if he was alright as he shoved past them, lips tight, squeezing the books on his chest. As he sat on the toilet lid he tried time and time again to bend over and tie his shoe laces without letting the books fall from his lap as his vision grew blurry and his cheeks damp. Yet another contest, to run and hide in the toilets quickly, to not let anyone see him, to tie those damn laces without letting the incredibly voluminous books of the expensive boarding school drop on the wet floor. What would his parents think if they got a call from the librarian telling them their son had destroyed a load of expensive Eton property?

Oh right. Nothing at all. Because excellence was no longer an issue for Thomas. Nothing he did would bring his parents back together, nothing could make them proud and happy anymore. No matter how hard he tried. Their world, _his_ world was falling apart and a few wet books wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever.

As the months passed he struggled to overcome the bitterness, the tormenting suspicion that one of the reasons his parents chose to send him away to Eaton, away from his sisters, was to save him the drama of their divorce, of his father moving out. He tried to hate them for thinking him weak, for thinking they were protecting him when what they really did was deprive him of the last moments they shared as a family, if only a shattered one. For not telling him the true reason of his banishment. He could at least have some kind of control over the situation if he was there. He would have witnessed the fall, and accepted it, one awful day at a time.

Instead, unlike his sisters, he was shut off from the transition, locked away. Blind, deaf and dumb to everything that mattered to him. In years to come he would recall that feeling, the loneliness, the isolation, the extreme pain. Whenever things didn’t go well for him, whenever he auditioned for a role and failed, whenever his acting teachers would push and push him to do things out of his comfort zone, to work 16-hour days on things he didn’t love, the darkness would come crawling back. Not a searing pain anymore; just an itch, a burning, deep and dull and numbing. Something telling him he just… wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t brave enough. Wasn’t _strong_ enough. Not enough to make anyone proud.

But he was an actor, and pain came handy; a useful tool that would easily bring tears to his eyes if he had to cry on demand. All he had to remember was his parents growing apart, or the lonely tears running down his cheeks as he was trying to tie his shoelaces in that toilet.

All he had to remember was being protected, and lied to.

 

“You ok, mate?”

Chris was holding two cups of fragrant steaming coffee as he hovered above Tom who was sitting on the staircase of the Asgardian vault. He was still in his Thor costume, red cape, wig and everything. Tom wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand.

“Yes. Yes. I’m good.” He unconsciously, nervously, wiped the heel of his palm on his expensive Loki breeches.

“That was intense!” Chris exclaimed and let out a whistle of admiration.

“Why-why aren’t you resting?” Tom interrupted him, gulping down his remaining tears. He was almost embarrassed that Chris was there to see him cry, if only for the cameras.

“C’mon, this was your big scene with Tony, what was I supposed to do?” Chris smiled, and Tom felt like the sun was breaking through the clouds after long hours of heavy rain. “I asked Ken to let me hang out with the crew. You were beautiful, bro. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks…” Tom muttered and took the coffee from Chris’ hand as his friend sat on the stairs next to him.

“For a moment there I honestly thought you were giving Tony a real heart attack, you were so _intense_ , mate!” Chris laughed. “You almost gave _me_ a heart attack.”

“Did I…” Tom smiled and looked in Chris’ eyes to make sure he was telling the truth.

“Yeah…” Chris nodded and looked at him with a smitten look on his face. “You totally broke my heart, I almost cried for you. How do you do that? I mean I know how I do that, all I have to do is think of my uncle dying. But you… you shine.”

Tom chuckled. “I assure you, on the inside I’m not shining at all when it happens. It’s…” he winced in pain. “It’s a very dark place really, and I’m happy to forget it when the shooting ends.”

“I understand,” Chris patted his back. “I understand…”

“Do you?”

Tom’s question was abrupt, his tone almost aggressive. He didn’t mean it that way but there he was, his big sad eyes desperate for someone to listen.

Chris furrowed his brow narrowing his eyes. He could tell Tom was trying to open up but was fighting it.

“Do you… do you want to talk about it?” he said in a soft voice.

Tom took a deep breath. “I guess… I guess me and Loki have that one thing in common. The feeling of growing distant, the alienation. The price of half truths.”

“What do you mean?” Chris asked and moved his weight closer to Tom, grabbing his coffee with both hands, ignoring the perfectly ironed cape that was now a bundle underneath him.

Tom lowered his eyes and squeezed his lips together, that tiny ever-present expression that was all Tom. “My… my parents divorced when I was thirteen. I was studying in Eton when I found out. When they…decided to tell me. Wasn’t easy. I mean it wasn’t easy before, the endless fights, the accusations, the coldness. My sisters and I would go to parties and see those happy kids with both their parents and we thought… why can’t we all be together just like everyone else? Why can’t we be normal?”

Chris shook his head. “There’s no ‘normal’, mate. Divorces happen all the time.”

“I know. I know,” Tom nodded, his eyes staring into the void. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less...” He let his head drop slightly as he stared down the brown bubbles in his cup, stirring the hot liquid in silence, waiting for it to cool down or just using it as an excuse to avoid his friend’s eyes. “When a parent leaves because he has no other choice, you’re just left wondering what it was _you_ did wrong, as their child. You’re hurting, you feel you’re being punished, so there must be _something_ you did wrong, right? And when it happens you’re just left with the constant fear… the fear of…”

“Of being left behind,” Chris finished his sentence with a compassionate nod.

Tom looked up in amazement.

“Yes…” he whispered almost mesmerized by Chris’ perceptiveness. He had been looking for these words for years and there he was, in his ridiculously expensive leather outfit made for a big-budget superhero movie, hearing those words from a seven-foot tall Aussie with biceps as big as mountains and a funny red cape that was now a dirty mess crumpled between their two bodies.

Chris smiled, looking like a god, and that smile was full of sun and rain and glorious thunder, full of pride and forgiveness.

Chris smiled, and it was all ok.

He held his coffee in one hand, put his other arm around Tom’s shoulder and squeezed him. _Hard._

 “You know, when we’re done filming I want you to come over to Australia, meet my folks there,” Chris said. “My mother always said she wanted a fourth kid.”

“A fourth _son_?” Tom raised his brows incredulously and smiled. “Quite a handful.”

“Meeeeh not exactly,” Chris crinkled his nose as he tilted his head from side to side, looking adorably childlike. “She wanted a daughter too, but since she can’t have any other kids anymore she’ll have to settle for a son, don’t you think? Makes things a lot easier since you’re all grown up and stuff, we won’t have to change your diapers and warm your bottles, will we? God, I hated that.”

Tom giggled thinking of Chris feeding his baby brother Liam. One baby feeding another baby in a hot summer day. A happy Aussie family of blonde bearfoot baby boys.

Chris laughed as well but he never took his arm off Tom’s shoulder, instead he squeezed harder and pulled Tom towards him. His laughter was warm and welcoming, a laughter that always made him so easy to love. Tom wondered how things would have been for him if he had a friend like Chris during his lonely Eton days, when the only things his friends cared about were grades and sports and holidays at home. Somehow it felt like Chris had always been there, his arrival in Tom’s life heralded by the extreme pain, the endless Berkshire rain, the darkness.

Still, there was no darkness if there was no light to cast those shadows, Tom knew that. Each defined the other, co-existing and taking their place in the universe like the phases of the moon. Each heralding the other.

“We will adopt you!” Chris said cheerfully, his face shining with sweetness. “You’ll be a Hemsworth, you’ll be one of us. How would you like that?”

Tom grinned, his eyes still glistening with the tears he shed for the scene revealing Loki’s parentage.

“…Awesome,” he replied.

Chris let go of Tom’s shoulder to rub with the back of his finger his friend’s pale cheek, where Loki’s tears were still drying up.

“C’mon,” he said as he stood up and shook off the dust from his cape. “Confession time over, let’s go have a bite. Or I’ll start missing my home and brothers as well. I love… _this_ ,” he made a gesture showing the sets and the crew that were having a break, “but I still miss the beach, you know? I miss everyone there.”

“Oh I understand.”

“I know you do,” Chris paused for a moment with the cup in his hands.  They had a long filming schedule ahead of them, long exhausting days, but they were in this together and that made things so much better, so much easier.

“You’re the only one who does, mate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Funny fact: as I was struggling to find inspiration to answer this anon ask (I mean what kinds of dramas would bring two people together in a bromantic story?) I inevitably checked out Tom Hiddleston’s IMDB page, looking for interesting trivia that might help, and it did mention that he went to Eton when his parents were divorcing and I thought BINGO, that’s it use that. Only after finishing this story and randomly googling his sisters’ pics for my moodboard did I find this article that, of course, confirmed what I suspected, and what IMDB implied: his heartbreak when he was away during the divorce. Nice one, IMDB.
> 
> [My tumblr](http://elenatria.tumblr.com/)   
> 


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